


Magadan-13

by raven (singlecrow)



Category: Cabin Pressure, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, I guess badass middle-aged ladies need friends with benefits too, Why is this happening, seriously, surprisingly uneldritch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:41:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24188329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/raven
Summary: Carolyn has a friend. A friend with benefits, okay.(Jon is confused about it.)
Relationships: Carolyn Knapp-Shappey/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	Magadan-13

Carolyn met Gertrude for the first time because of an argument between Martin and Douglas over Super Mario. It turned out to be one of the few things, other than reciting the operations manual verbatim and panicking, that Martin was better at than Douglas; and unlike in the case of the operations manual and the panicking, there were contests you could enter. Douglas had said that only people with extremely little else going on in their lives could possibly find any fulfilment in such a thing and Martin had said something pointed about ex-wives and lonely big houses in the nice bits of Fitton, and then they had to make an unscheduled cargo stop at Magadan and Carolyn finally snapped. She left her pilots in Gertie to bicker over who got the non-seaweed catering, crossed the nuclear desolation that qualified as an airstrip out here in the Russian Far Everything and went into the terminal to see if there were such a thing as a cup of coffee.

There wasn’t, unless you counted gritty grey liquid trickling out of a vending machine, but at least there was solitude. Carolyn got some of the not-coffee anyway, trying to decide if it really did smell of fish or if that were just her imagination, and in her preoccupation with the subject managed to walk into the only other person in a hundred-metre radius. The _other_ middle-aged lady who’d chosen to spend a wild night in the Magadan-13 air terminal, population one small charter airline, three ground staff and some fur seals – was, for some reason, carrying a box of files and what looked like former Soviet recording equipment and for a confused minute everything was fish and bits of paper. But Carolyn helped pick up the files and Gertrude – her name was Gertrude – dabbed grey liquid off her blouse and offered Carolyn some of her tissues, and somehow after that they were friends, or what passed for it on this godforsaken permafrost.

“So,” Gertrude said, once they were settled in next to the terminal’s only electric heater. “What brings you here?”

“Avoiding my pilots yelling at each other over pixellated plumbers,” Carolyn said, which was more specific than she’d intended to be. “Unless you mean, to Magadan-13 Almost An Airport, in which case it’s a Gazprom oligarch who needs twenty-seven crates of something dangerous and unspecified flown post-haste to London.” 

“Twenty-seven crates of something dangerous and unspecified,” Gertrude said, glancing at her stack of reassembled files. “You know, I actually don’t think that’s one of mine.”

“You’re also in the transporting weird cargo business,” Carolyn said, which seemed obvious now she came to mention it; people didn’t come on holiday to the Magadan Urban Okrug. “By weird cargo I don’t mean my pilots. Maybe I do mean my pilots.”

“Something like that,” Gertrude said, smiling. It was a nice smile, though it seemed rusty from disuse. “I, ah, I travel a lot for my work, anyway. Not very glamorous places.”

“I know the feeling.” Carolyn stretched out and yawned. “I suppose I should go and see if Martin has killed Douglas or Douglas has killed Martin or Arthur has challenged them both to a Getting One’s Tongue Stuck To The Fuselage best-of-three. And then we can bed down for the night in our very glamorous seventeen-seater aeroplane. It was nice to meet you.”

“Carolyn.” Gertrude looked up. “If you’d prefer somewhere more congenial… well. There is exactly one hotel in this town, with one room left available.” 

Carolyn went to tell her pilots to be ready to leave the stand at five thirty-three am precisely, and came back to take Gertrude up on the offer. The one hotel had no advertising, website or even a sign over the door, and she wondered how Gertrude had known it was there. But it was better than several hours of the operations manual on the subject of appropriate rest-hours and accommodations for pilots, and she put the question out of her mind. In the morning Martin and Douglas wanted to know where she’d been, and who with, but in the confusion of de-icing Arthur they forgot, and Carolyn kept her own counsel.  


*

And that would have been that, if Carolyn hadn’t run into Gertrude again in Washington DC on a sticky day about six months later. By that time Martin and Douglas were getting along much better – they’d had several recent bonding-in-adversity experiences, including Arthur’s thirty-first birthday at Bristol Trapeze and Trampoline – and MJN was solvent enough to stretch to an air-conditioned cubby-hole of one’s own. 

So it wasn’t a matter of obligation – and truthfully, hadn’t been last time; Carolyn had enjoyed Gertrude’s company far more than she expected given the circumstances and they’d come to an amicable bedsharing arrangement – but Gertrude suggested a drink and Carolyn went along. She was attracted by the prospect spending time with any human being other than Martin, Douglas, or Arthur, but then just… attracted. Gertrude was good company, and a good listener; she thought that MJN escaping from a crazed Tunisian airfield manager with several gallons of baggage truck fuel and a Scottish cricket team was funny, rather than getting the hunted look most people did when Carolyn told that story. Their seven hours in Magadan hadn’t been romantic, but somehow the hundred percent humidity and the presence of whisky cocktails made all the difference.

“I live and work in London,” Gertrude said, in the morning. “But it’s not always the nicest place to be. I wouldn’t recommend you visit.”

Carolyn got the message. “What do you do there, though?” she asked, trying to convey just by her tone of voice that she didn’t care; that she was going to put this encounter out of her mind entirely and go back to watching out for eligible bachelors while dog-walking in Fitton.

“It’s not that interesting,” Gertrude said, and Carolyn didn’t ask any more questions, thinking about how she’d better be hurrying off to Dulles, anyway. But Gertrude kissed her cheek and smiled. 

“I do travel a lot,” she said.

*

A few more times, over the years. Amsterdam, another brief stopover with scarcely enough time for stroopwafels. Madeira, with cake. Paris, of all the ludicrous places. A hen party had wanted a plane to themselves on the way to getting pissed on the Montmartre funicular. Gertrude was there in the hotel lobby, waiting, as if she’d known exactly where Carolyn would be. 

“There’s a decent enough seafood restaurant along the riverbank,” she said, without greeting. “Unless you have to attend to Arthur’s moral education or deal with twenty-seven crates of anything.”

“Seafood sounds wonderful,” Carolyn said, meaning it. “The others have gone to Euro Disney. I never wanted to let Gordon take Arthur to theme parks, I always worried he’d just let go of his hand and I’d never see Arthur again. But I trust Martin and Douglas.”

The confession hung in the air, shimmering. Carolyn had her hands up in front of her face, as though to grab it back.

“Well,” Gertrude said lightly. “Let’s see how much fun we can have before they get back.”

*

Darwin, in the Northern Territories. A strange night, Carolyn thought later, with shadows that didn’t quite fall in their accustomed places. She told Gertrude that she was scared of the dark, sometimes, and Gertrude didn’t laugh. Rome, for Mr Birling. Gertrude bought her some whisky to cheer her up. 

Lombardy, in northern Italy. Phnom Penh, Dublin, Ottawa. Paris again.

And then… mostly Fitton, for a while. Gertie, it turns out, is made of gold. Arthur sells ice cream. Martin is getting married. And on a golden evening, with the late summer sun slicing the airfield up into shadows, a stranger turns up at the portacabin at Fitton with a notebook. 

Carolyn doesn’t notice him at first, preoccupied by something she’s sending to HMRC. It’s only at the sound of a soft cough that her eyes lift to the man in the doorway. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for…” He consults his notebook. “Carolyn Knapp-Shappey-Shipwright. That’s, um, a lot of names.”

“I don’t need to use them all at once,” Carolyn says. “Besides, they each remind me of a part of myself.”

The words hang on the air for a while.

“Ah,” Carolyn says, after another moment. “You’re related to Gertrude.”

He doesn’t look anything like her, and that voice is about as Welsh as a state-sponsored dragon massacre. But Carolyn’s not a fool, and not someone who just spills out her secrets to strangers.

“Not by, ah, blood,” he says. “But, yes, in a manner of speaking. Are you Carolyn?”

“Ms Knapp-Shappey to you,” Carolyn says, motioning him to the only other chair, which he waves off. Apparently he prefers to stay leaning against the door like he’s afraid the portacabin will collapse on them. Carolyn is busy rolling her eyes when it finally occurs to her why strangers come to visit you, at the end of a long day when everything is quiet and still. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” he says. In the deepening twilight, she can’t see his eyes. “It was about a year ago now. I’d have let you know before, but I only just found your details in her papers. I’m sorry.”

“All right,” Carolyn says. “Thank you for telling me.”

He only nods in response. He has some of Gertrude’s otherworldliness to him, but also something that reminds Carolyn, oddly, of Martin. At some point in her small bizarre career being the CEO for a small bizarre airline, she’s started ranking every man she meets on a scale between Martin and Douglas, and while this man certainly has Douglas’s habit of leaning against the wall of a room looking superciliously at everything in it, it’s wariness she sees in him above all else. He didn’t sit down because he didn’t want his back to the door.

“You came all the way down here, to tell me,” Carolyn says, trying not to make it sound accusing; she doesn’t mean it to be. “You could have written, if you had the address.”

“I could have,” he says. A long pause, as though he’s steeling himself to something. “It’s just… well. You’ve never had anything odd happen to you and felt the need to tell someone about it. At least, if you have, I haven’t heard about it. You and … sorry, what is your airline actually called? I have it down here as MJN Air, but that’s not what the sign outside says.”

“We had a slight company reorganisation,” Carolyn says. “It’s a long story.” She feels compelled to add, “A good one.”

“I’m sure it is,” he says. It seems like it’s positive act of will for him not to ask more about that. “From what I understand, Gertrude never engaged your airline’s services at any point in its existence. Though I believe you _do_ transport unusual cargo.”

“Horse semen and yacht parts, mostly,” Carolyn says, absently. “Martin and Douglas won a crate of pineapples in a raffle once, the hold smelled like the Copacabana for a month. What’s your point?”

“I’m not sure,” he says. “I came because I don’t know who you are, and what you had to do with Gertrude, and that bothers me.”

“I was Gertrude’s…” Carolyn considers how to put it. “Friend, I suppose. Yes.”

She places the emphasis on “friend” with care, and he looks at her with understanding.

“I suppose all things are possible if you wait long enough,” he says. “Thank you very much, Ms Knapp-Shappey, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Wait,” Carolyn says, when he puts his notebook away in his pocket. “You could have some tea, before you go. It’s only horrible PG Tips but it’s what we’ve got.”

She thinks he’ll say no, but he nods assent and she makes the tea with only a moment of despair at why Arthur keeps the sugar _in_ the teapot. When the two chipped mugs are on the table, she raises one in toast.

“To Gertrude,” she says, and he clinks mugs with her. “Look, I don’t suppose you want to come to a wedding in Liechtenstein? It’s in the morning and the whole country’s invited.”

She hadn’t felt the need to ask Gertrude that; she’d just expected to see her there. Probably with an acerbic word about the princess’s taste in bridesmaids’ dresses, and plenty of whisky. 

“Thank you, but no,” says Gertrude’s nameless successor. “If you’re lucky, you’ll never see me again.”

But he’s laughing as he says it, and finishes off the tea before he sets out. Carolyn watches him walk back across the airfield, noting the shadows that follow him, long and straight and sharp.

**Author's Note:**

> The Martin in Carolyn's internal monologue is Martin Crieff, obviously, not Martin Blackwood, but honestly those two also need to meet and fall in awkward love.
> 
> (I am at episode 117 of TMA, "Testament" - please do not spoil me in the comments!)


End file.
